Tuesday, March 8, 2011

This Aint White Castle

Tall Grass Bakery was selling mini hamburger buns at the farmers market this week, so I took the opportunity to make sliders! I mixed up some Skagit River Valley Ranch ground beef with their signature spice mix and some left over Mt. Townsend Seastack cheese. I mixed this together with my hands of course. I'm all about cooking with my hands, here is how I check to see if the burgers are done:

There's a trick I learned somewhere a long time ago to train your finger to be like a meat thermometer. If you touch your pointer finger to your thumb with one hand and use the other hand to poke the flesh just below your thumb, it's about the exact same texture as a medium rare piece of meat. Each finger touching your thumb then corresponds to a done-ness of meat, like so:

Anyway, back to the sliders... Here's the line up with Alex making some french fries:

There's Golden Glen Creamery cheddar cheese, demi-glace mayonaisse, salad greens, caramelized onions, garlic and peppers, mustard, and way in the background I was toasting the buns with the bagel setting! (Finally owning a toaster from this century is really exciting).

I need to digress from the sliders for another minute to talk about demi-glace. This is something I've thought of doing for a while and I have no idea why I'm just now getting around to it. Demi-glace is just very concentrated, reduced stock. I made about four gallons of stock and then boiled it down to less than a gallon of thick rich deliciousness. I then froze this in an ice cube tray so it takes up less space in the freezer and then I can just mix an ice-cube with some water to make stock for cooking in the future! Also, demi-glace by itself is pretty amazing...

Mise en place (miz-ahn-plas) - Culinary term for having everything organized and planned from start to finish before you begin. Literally translates to "putting in place" or "everything in it's place".

ABOUT ME

I love to play in the kitchen, shop at farmer markets, forage for wild edibles, eat at interesting restaurants, grow my own food, and ogle over food art. My husband, Alex is also a generally fabulous foodie companion!